Jaeah Lee

Reporter

Jaeah reports, writes, codes, and charts at Mother Jones. Her writings have appeared in The Atlantic, the Guardian, Wired, Christian Science Monitor,Global Post,Huffington Post,Talking Points Memo, and Grist. She was a 2013-14 Middlebury fellow in environmental journalism. Her work has been named a finalist in the Data Journalism Awards. In a former life, she researched and wrote about China at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Hunting of Canis lupus is making a major comeback.

It's a bad day to be a gray wolf in Wyoming, which today begins its first wolf-hunting season in more than half a century. It's one of three states—the other two are Minnesota and Wisconsin—that will offer hunts for the first time in decades this fall. Two more states—Idaho and Montana—will offer wolf hunts this year for the third time since 2009.

The red dots on the map below represent wolves in the United States—a grand total of more than 5,000 in the lower 48 and 11,200 in Alaska (where wolves have never been protected). Multiple dots in one state show approximate locations of wolves; in states with only one dot, only statewide information was available.

Click on a dot to see the number of wolves and their protection status in each state. In some states, there are two population numbers: "Observed population" refers to wolves that wildlife officials have physically seen and documented, while "estimated population" is an extrapolation, a guess at the total number of wolves believed to exist. (Wolves can be quite elusive and their territories can span hundreds of miles, so it's not always possible to track all of them.)

In the 1800s, hunters drove the gray wolf to the brink of extinction in the lower 48, and it wasn't until the 1930s and '40s that states began to outlaw the practice. Federal and state endangered species acts helped wolf populations slowly rebound, and in the past several years, the species has been delisted in several states.

Today, wolves are possibly the most politicized animal in the United States. Many ranchers fiercely oppose protection programs—understandable, since wolves are a very real threat to their cattle and sheep. Conservation groups, on the other hand, point to wolves' important ecological role: Without predators, entire ecosystems can be thrown out of balance.

It's been a tumultuous few years for wolves in the northern Rockies. In 2009, Idaho and Montana offered the first wolf-hunting seasons in decades. Then, in 2010, conservation groups won a federal case that restored protection for wolves in those states. In 2011, though, Congress once again delisted the wolves and allowed the hunts to continue. Hunts in Idaho and Montana killed 545 wolves last year.

Special thanks to John Motsinger at Defenders of Wildlife for his help with this piece.

Following Chicago's big teacher strike, several Chicagoland districts are facing new protests. And: see strikes near you over the last 40 years.

Update Wednesday, November 14:Thought teacher strikes were yesterday's news? Turns out that September's walkout by Chicago teachers set off a rash of other strikes in Illinois. The Chicago Teachers Union ultimately ratified a 3-year contract, raising pay by about 18 percent on average. But Lake Forest teachers decided to strike the same week over similar issues: health care, benefits, and performance evaluations linked to standardized test scores, closely followed by three additional Chicagoland teacher strikes. We've also updated the map with submissions from reader comments, so keep them coming!

By our count, there have been 839 teacher strikes in the US in the last four decades, 740 in Pennsylvania alone. See our map below to find out where teachers have gone on strike the most, and which states prohibit teachers from hitting the picket line.

(See below the map for notes on the ins-and-outs of what constitutes a strike, strike legality, and more.)

Are we missing a strike? We are building this data set as we go, so if you know of a strike in your hometown in the last 40 years or so, please leave it in the comments below.

If you're planning on voting in November, here's a few things you should know.

Since the start of 2011, more than 180 bills have been introduced in 41 states (and counting) that could make it harder for you to register to vote, prove that you're eligible to vote, vote early, or vote by mail. In fact, the Brennan Center for Justice estimates that at least 5 million voters nationwide could be affected by these bills. Thanks, local legislators!

For some perspective, we've compiled data on the average wages of elementary-school, middle-school, and high school teachers in more than 300 metropolitan areas. As you'll see, most teachers make more than $45,320, the average yearly wage for all occupations tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yet the range of what they earn varies widely: Elementary-school teachers in Jefferson City, Missouri, earn an average of $37,090; their colleagues in Long Island, New York, earn an average of $90,560.

Click on a city on the map below for more information on teachers' average wages within its greater metropolitan area. Note: Earnings do not include benefits.